104: Serve & Protect? A History of the Police

BackStory

Education, History

4.5 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 17 August 2016

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For many Americans, police shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota earlier this summer were strikingly reminiscent of similar instances across the nation in recent years. The prominence of both the shooting--and the retaliation--has sparked a new round of questioning about the role of local police in their communities. On this episode, we’ll explore how the first municipal police departments were assembled to quell riots in the 1840s, not fight crime. And we’ll consider what happens when the police don’t protect those they serve.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is backstory.
0:01.6	In 1967, Senator Fred Harris asked African Americans
0:05.8	in a handful of northern cities
0:07.6	how things were going between them and their white neighbors.
0:10.8	Things were so segregated in these cities
0:13.4	that they didn't see any white people at all, except the police.
0:17.6	How much police represent the communities they're serving
0:21.2	has long been a sensitive issue.
0:23.4	It's part of the reason, in fact,
0:25.1	that Americans were slow to create police departments
0:27.7	in the first place.
0:29.2	But in the 1840s,
0:30.9	authorities decided that a standing police force
0:33.4	was better than the alternative.
0:35.8	At one point, they're actually firing Canada at each other
0:39.0	down the streets of Philadelphia.
0:41.6	Today on the show, the police and the police,
0:44.8	from a time when politicians exchanged police jobs for votes
0:48.7	to the era of autonomous cops that were too shielded from oversight.
0:52.8	In the middle of the night, people started being dragged out of their beds.
0:56.8	A history of the police.
1:00.1	Major funding for backstory is provided by the ShiaCon Foundation,
	...

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